When a new user starts out on Hive they may be excited to vote on everything they see, but there may be times when your vote is pointless. The rewards algorithm has a feature so that if the rewards on a post or comment are below a threshold (about 2.5c) then the rewards are just 'burnt' and nobody gets them. So if you are the only one likely to vote on a comment and you do not have enough HP to push it above that amount then it may be a waste of your vote. You need about 3000 HP (by my estimate) to give a post or comment enough rewards to guarantee it pays out when nobody else votes on it.
On peakd you can hover the mouse over the amount to see a more accurate figure.
I think on Hive.blog users with smaller amounts of HP do not get a slider to set their vote, so it is always 100%. You can vote ten times each day at that level and your voting power will recover over 24 hours. Voting more just reduces the value of your votes.
So my recommendation to new users with less than thousands of HP is to just vote on posts. You will not gain much from voting on your own posts, so you may as well support others. If you get lucky you may make something from curation. That depends on when big accounts vote on it.
If you make anything on your own posts and comments then power it all up to increase your vote. If you earn Hive Backed Dollars (HBD) you can convert them to Hive via the market or just use the Convert to Hive option that takes 3.5 days.
You may have seen me offering to delegate to small accounts via Twitter. I generally only do this for people who have hardly any HP and are struggling to post due to low RCs. If you are consistently producing good posts and have less than 500 HP I may add you to the @tenkminnows voting trail, but I am selective about this.
If you want to appreciation for comments on your own posts then reply to them. People will like that and maybe give you an extra vote. Just do not appear too needy. Replying to every post by a given person, regardless of the topic may give that appearance. Real engagement that contributes to the conversation makes for a better experience.
My other main recommendation for new users is to find people who share your interests. That can be individuals or communities. If you are into chess then find a chess community. That will mean you have posts that interest you in your communities feed and you can comment with some authority. Make Hive fun for yourself. I know the money is what may have brought you here originally, but it is not that easy to make a lot. I do okay, but then I have spend hundreds of hours on connecting with people, including attending many events such as Steemfest and local meetups. Hive is a social platform, despite what some people might say.
Finally, I will say to those new users, do not vote on my posts or comments! Give votes to small accounts who make a few cents on each post. You may help them make a tiny bit more. Voting strategically for curation rewards with low HP is likely to have a low payoff. Vote on what you enjoy and gradually build your HP.
Experienced users can correct me on anything I have got wrong. I do not keep track of all the inner workings of Hive.
Let's make Hive fun for everyone of every level. That is key to gaining and retaining users.
Hive five!
I think this post also touched me. So all the comments I voted ended up being burnt. This is a nice post to share with those I have brought into hive. Thanks for sharing.
I am quite also interested in this:
I just hope I am qualified enough to be selected.
I have just added you to the list. I see a lot of people wasting their votes and hope a few see this.
Thanks for adding me. I will sure make sure the people I have brought into hive gets to read this post.
Thanks again 🤗
Still trying to get my head around this. To “invest” more in yourself/myself you need HP. Until now I’ve had 50/50 HBD/HP setting for rewards. I have since updated this to 100% HP. To convert my existing HBD to HP. It seems that I first need to convert this HBD to Hive, then I’m assuming I can the convert Hive to HP. Does that sound about right?
Yes, you have to convert HBD to Hive and then power up. Best to get it all powered up to increase your vote. I appreciate not everyone can/will buy Hive. I did not buy Steem in the beginning, did get some later on. It can still be tricky to buy and sell crypto for fiat. I have a debit card that lets me do it.
Having a low HP is quiet disheartening. I never knew that my efforts to vote as little as I can gets burnt.
Whenever I'm qualified, I do hope to make an impact with my votes. It's not easy being a new user.
If you don't have much HP then just make it count when you can. Adding to existing votes or discovering content that others will vote on are key. Just try not to waste it.
I would advise to power up all you have unless you need to cash out.
I can remember well when my vote was not worth a cent. I tried to add value with my comments.
Right now I'm powering up. Gathering as much HP as I can. I don't need cash for now. I'm working to add value to other people's post and also create original and meaningful contents.
I'm really delighted that I've found your article! Not only that it explains them last few burning questions I've had on my mind for some time, but also the comments from other users are spot on!
I'll follow your advice and stop voting on every post I like as it will make no difference. After I distribute 0.001 which happens after just one vote, the rest are then pointless. Instead, I'll leave an appreciation and a thank you message 👍🏻
good advice :) honestly most times I don't really care, I just go with the flow
I'm happy when I find enough time to curate and in this time enough to vote..^^
I need to get more mindful of this too. Sometime I just vote as an acknowledgement that I read the post or comment.
Maybe people should just give a 1% vote, if they have a slider. Either way it may have no reward value. I just don't want people to waste voting power.
I have more than 3 years of experience and still don't know anything. I do everything on my discretion and I am happy of whatever may come lol
I don't know it all either. Some of it is in the Hive.blog FAQ, but I am not sure this aspect is mentioned.
Informative post.I appreciate your idea of helping small accounts with HP delegations.
Happy to help. I hate to see people give up from frustration.
Good article. Last year, thanks to the #tenkminnows project, I reached the level of "yellow fish".
I'm running a simple competition Around The World and the sixth round is running. If you consider it appropriate, you can recommend this competition to your "newbies". Here is a link to the current round of the competition:
https://peakd.com/aroundworld/@bucipuci/around-the-world-challenge-6
I've shared it if that helps.
Thanks :-). Maybe someone will join and help them to "earn" :-)
Hmm I never knew about this, It's good to know even for those with HP so we know not to set the value too low.
I set a default percentage in peakd. I like to reward comments when I can, but my voting power is low right now.
Oof, That means almost every single comment upvote probably gets burned from me, ugh, and here I am trying to make comments more valuable xD At the moment 100% on comments doesn't even get to 1.5c :( Think I need to be almost 100% mana to get close to 3c.
There are some projects like @dustsweeper who can add an extra vote to get over the threshold. One guy who kept flagging me kept hitting my comments to push them under the threshold, but I don't really care about losing 2c.
When I was a newbie on Hive, it took me a few weeks to realize that there is a slider on PeakD which you can use to upvote posts at 1%, since I found really great posts and wanted to upvote them even if I would not get a curation reward.
The Hive.blog FAQ says the following:
I didn't realize that PeakD allows you to use the vote slider, regardless of how many HP you have (for as long as it is above zero).
Peakd offers a few extra features that hive.blog lacks. Otherwise a new user could just do 10 full votes each day. I try to vote on good comments, but even my voting power runs down over a day.
@bucipuci has alerted me to your program to support new users. What can I do to join?
I have added you to the voting list. You will get some extra votes on your posts, so keep posting.
Thanks you for your support. I will try to make my contributions deserve it.
Liked it. Almost felt that the whole post was trying to say something to me 😂 I learned that the hard way as I was upvoting every comment or post I see. I was comparing upvoting with social media liking, i guess, which is not exactly true and do not serve users as you mentioned.
I didn't want to single anyone out. Hive is strange and confusing when you start out and I hope this helps.
Amen to that @steevc and @rmsadkri, you are not the only one we see that daily and when you know where to look and how to act its quite simple
I stopped voting :P Not entirely true but, Yes i am more cautious and being more conservative while voting.
In life you get to meet people who are real and willing to help the Young ones grow. Sir, thanks for this post. God bless you.
Thats the thing that new arrivals have most difficulty with, we at the terminal see that a lot, they will drain their RC with all the good intentions but forget they only have 10. We try to teach but its hard when they are just enthousiastic
I think the need feedback from the user interface. When you vote with Hive or peakd it does not show your current voting power or RCs. If they did and the values were low then people might consider holding back. I see so many accounts with VP down to 20% or less. Making the reward threshold obvious would also help. Many people are not going to look at an FAQ or posts like this one.
Mind you, I know that user interface design is hard. You do not want to overload people with data.
Well not overload but the top 10 to do’s is a thing to start with.
Many people are not going to look at an FAQ or posts like this one, thats weird because when you buy a new appliance you als read the manual right, or when you use a new drug you read the prescription right?
Everyday i am in ahwwww over the things people do , ask or get into.
But thats just me a blogging addict and reading to be on the safe side , maybe i am doing it wrong hahahaha
I'm not sure people do read manuals. I bet the support lines get a lot of dumb questions. We may not be typical.
Also you mention steem here when I think you meant to say hive.
Doh! I'll fix that. Still got Steem in my brain :)
The communities have definitely made commenting easier. You can find stuff that you are actually interested in and focus your efforts. That will also help keep your RC's and VP in a good place while your account is small. This was a really nice write up!